Month: January 2017

Here I write something which I have not relayed to you at any stage prior

Here I tell you
that when I were a small girl, a pint sized
miniature human girl
my friends and I would tell tales of the men we would grow up to marry
The men who would whisk us off our
tippy, fairy toes and
take our tiny hands into their
soft bear paws to lead us from our broken homes or
broken self-worths into love and lush woodland
and we would tell their names
heights, occupations and passions
I would tell them your name
however strange it sounds to me now
That you would not be a tall man but you would be so
fiercely loyal and you would steal away my heart
I would dream of calling your love my own
to feel the heat of sixty thousand suns beating down on me and
the pull of your currents, under, over, through my vibrations
Making what is mine yours and yours
mine

This is the pitter patter of tiny feet dancingaround the maypole at the centre of my heartthat makes me feel nervous, I might trip overor worsest- st- stutter and I’d be blushingmy eyes searching for the right place to layWhile I know they should settle into yourswhere green, hazel forests meetgreen, blue oceans for the first time andfall in love with the unfamiliarityThe stark and static difference betweentall, strong, ever reaching and ever growing pinesand deep, dark, ever drowning and ever suffocating seasThe similarity is that they are both strong and wilfulWe are both unplumbed spaceswaiting for someone to arrive at our depths and stilllove us

This must be how it feels to rest after aeons of movementrestless activity where worry kisses the jitters

This is the place where I choose patience over anger andabstain for there is no need for fill where emotion runs dryI choose to close my eyes to the darkness of my bedroomopen them in that same room to empty light

You’re married but I’m sitting across from you and dull, red neon light is beginning to permeate my aura.

You’re kissing a guy we’ve only known for a week and I’m feeling like a third wheel that’s either entirely useless or unnecessary. Or both.
You know, like those Reliant Robins from the seventies that toppled over with every corner taken.

I don’t know where to look.

You’re toying with this guy and I’m just watching your smile enchant him. He’s wrapped so tightly around your little finger I can see it dusking and purpling from across the table. Even in this carmine light I can see both your colours changing.

He’s wearing a two piece suit and it’s grey, I think it’s polyester. You’re wearing a striped leotard and you’re too cold in your denim shorts so I leave you two alone and go buy a blanket.

When I get back to our table, he excuses himself to go to the little boys room and, you tell me how he makes you happy and that you have six heart bones that work in unison. “If one goes down”, you say, “they all do”. I say “like Christmas lights”, you grin with your eyes and this wide row of pearly teeth that have tiny gaps between the tops.
I only notice because I stare at your face most every day, I don’t know what I’ll do when you leave.

He comes back with open arms and eyes wide, the nuanced inflexion of his speech draws you in. Remember this: he is an actor. See exaggeration, see charisma.
See, confidence.

You play off one another all evening.
I flick through the photographs we all had taken in an old photobooth earlier, when the sun was still visible and the sky was blue but it’s night now. You look like you are a part of each other, connected with some invisible twine. Perhaps someone bundled you together in butchers paper and carefully sewed all your seams to one anothers coats, ensuring your coming together for maybe you feel naked when your sides are split and missing their counterparts.

He calls me your familiar. I don’t know where that phrase fits on the insult scale but I feel like it’s pretty high up there.
Suggesting I cannot be without you to dote upon. Sure, I do my very best to be the best friend you could have but that’s because I’ve never had a friend who cares about me even half as much as I care for them.
I’ve had ‘friends’ before, they’ve all turned out to be liars and worms, the kind of girl’s who’d sleep with your boyfriend before and after telling you how he’d never cheat on you. The kind of girl’s who’d rather consume all the attention than let anyone even ask for your name.

This red light is achingly beautiful, romantic and soft; maybe that’s why he can’t keep his hands in his pockets and yours on your drink.

Everything in this light makes me feel lonely.
The tender’s are laughing together, there is a couple who look like maybe it’s their first date and their timid hands are wanting more than to clutch the glasses before them. Their mouths are moving and their eyes are watching their mouths. Even the plants look like they’re in love.

I glance back across the table when I hear you say my name. Look at you, perched on his polyester lap. Looks like you’ve been there all along, your whole life even.

There are unplumbed canals within me where
love runs thick like pudding through a soda straw
deafens me and
I am left with mouth parched, somewhat achey
searching for any such sweet liquid to sate my thirst

This hydrous is distant
necessary and of want
Only the tick, tick, ticking of time will
deliver the candied kiss of love’s immersion
a baptism of sorts

Though I am liquid and spreading fast Inotice only a gentleman lay down his freshly pressedcharcoal, tweed coatfor his lady-of-the-evening to step safely across my backSkipping away and smilingshe turns her head back to flash him herlipstick grin, a perfect beacon of beautyTheir fingers still interlockedhe swiftly lifts that pricey piece from my backgives one sharp shake and hangs it from his shoulder

His smile, too, is flawless and flashy

Bells ring out and chorus fills the airbecausesad music is a sometimes foodto gorge on until you’re gluttonous gutis fat with shame andheavy tears cannot flow butonly roll lead like down your face and bloated bodyYou feel thick and your breath feels humidviscous air you suckgreedily still into your empty lungs

I want to wake always with none but you tangled in six-hundred thread count beside me. My hair is on my pillow.

Your hair is on my pillow.

I always want to twist my fingers between your fingers and trace gingerly the lines on your skin. I want to ask you tenderly “what does this mean?“, and taste the salt left on your skin after we made each other sweat the night before.

To know you will cut my fringe when it grows too long for me to clearly see how brilliant you are and that you will read me forwards, backwards and diagonally to etch my every meaning into your soul. For you to know that when I bruise it may not have been a rough encounter, when I am sewn together by needle and by thread I need more than seven days before the stitching may be removed, to know when wounded I bleed heavily and cry enough to encapsulate mountains, to know that I am not in love by choice but by happenstance or perhaps rather instance.

I want always to know that you will be my overmorrow and each morrow thereafter.

Imagine their dusty eyes,
all yellowing from age and pale
milky and musty
Hoarse murmurings
dry, sandy cough

They’d see us shaking as we teeter for their every word
then SLAMto the freezer when it all becomes too much

Too little, too late

They’ve got us mesmerised in their messages and
phrases so carefully spelled out
Oops, the proof reader didn’t proof this copy six times over
this is a grammatical error
and this,
this is a spelling mistake

They’d see us from angles we’d wish just didn’t exist
see us naked under sheets and silk
Reading by torchlight, just one more chapter
just one more poem